Great move John. Lawyers always solve problems. Hey! I've got a thought, why don't we just pile all the lawyers up along the river to act as a dike?

The information is really not that surprising.

I would think that when the question of what could be done arose, seeking legal advice when there appeared to be inaction or recklessness would come to mind. It's typically a back pocket last resort sort of thing, and the question becomes, when has that point in the process been reached.

There is preservation by those who have the duty to preserve, such as the city in this case has the duty to save its citizens harmless. Then there is the notion of self-preservation which we are all born with. When we see others are not acting to save us harmless, and we think we can do a better job of it, then we have a duty to ourselves to take action to preserve us and our possessions.

I do not feel the situation has been life threatening. It has been property threatening and financial security threatening.

If lawyers can light a fire, and people want to use them for doing that, by all means, it is a reasonable thing to do, especially if you are preparing to take action on your own to preserve your business as best as you know how.

No, Parrothead, lawyers won't work as fill --- there's too much rot in that material.

is there any accountability for the money being spent on these dyke and berm projects? i seem to recall hearing about the city wanting to build up river road last summer, is this just an easy way for the city to have it done under provincial funding? maybe we should create a blockage to destroy the cameron street bridge and have it rebiult under the same function.

Just a thought, wy dont we berm each side of river road and create a water course through it and reroute the water past the ice jam?

You're getting there. Just come up with a scheme which will prevent ice from enteringt that channel without damming up the entrance to the channel.

Why not try blasting. All the "experts" say blasting won't work. Why not try it? Explosives don't cost much, if it works great, if it doesn't not much has been spent. There is a channel in the Fraser right now. Start there and work upstream, lets see what happens.

seems to me DFO wont allow it for fears of damaging fish habitat, but i do think at some point clearer minds should prevail.

John Brink has proven his complete ignorance. Surely he knows better than all the experts, after all he is an entrepreneur!!

Right on, seamutt! Eventual dredging (the *must* solution) will disturb and alter the river bed anyways!

The last thing to accuse Mr. Brink of should be *ignorance.*

Entrepreneurs like him are used to making thoughtful decisions because they have to live with the consequences, good or bad!

Wish that some salaried people would be held accountable for their decisions or indecisiveness (like dithering) when decisive action is required.

Brink for Mayor in 2008! ;-)

The flood situation is extrordinary and while they are in the 200 year flood plane we can't use this as an excuse as they new better. These businesses employ and will continue to employ hundreds of PG citizens. I wonder how they would feel if their jobs are in long-term jeopardy?
Yes tax dollars are being used to funds this however these businesses pay taxes on their income, property and more taxes on their lumber exports. Don't you think that at a time like this all levels of gov't should pitch into help!
For Gods sake lets get behind and support these co.'s who have been great corp. citizens for many years!
V500

The flood situation is extrordinary and while they are in the 200 year flood plane we can't use this as an excuse as they new better. These businesses employ and will continue to employ hundreds of PG citizens. I wonder how they would feel if their jobs are in long-term jeopardy?
Yes tax dollars are being used to funds this however these businesses pay taxes on their income, property and more taxes on their lumber exports. Don't you think that at a time like this all levels of gov't should pitch into help!
For Gods sake lets get behind and support these co.'s who have been great corp. citizens for many years!
V500

As a city tax payer I object to city tax dollars being used when the river is federal jurisdiction

It is the responsibility of the federal government to look after the rivers

I have been in and out of town the last few weeks but I have not seen Mr. Harris nor Mr. Hill trying to get the feds to step up and look after their responsibility

If this were to happen back in the east it is my opinion that the feds would jump in quickly & decisively and have the situation under control

With this being a safe riding for them I doubt if they even worry about what happens out west

I am wondering why our Mayor is not going after the feds with both barrels as he knows that they are the ones who have the ultimate responsibility when it comes to rivers

After he retires this fall is he looking at federal politics to fill his time

Who is in charge? Gimme a name, please. Is it our Commander-in-Chief (aka the mayor?) Anyone else? Studies? Committees? Opinions? They obviously don't work. Fix the problem. Got a lot of contributing factors? Fix the easy ones first. If hizzoner can pull rank at the Multiplex, why can't he go down to the river and take charge, pull rank again, and do something? If Eugene Fetterly was mayor right now I think he would suggest everyone in town go down to the river and "adopt" a piece of ice. As fer the leaderless and helpless city crews I am afraid they just compare to the little dutch boy with his finger in the dike. Everyone is in charge or no one is in charge? How many bucks do we have to pay for decisiveness and leadership? This flooding ain't rocket science. I remember a few years ago some people in this town were whining about not having their streets plowed and some flippant city employee suggested that these people should just "wait until Mother Nature takes care of their streets". Mother Nature did. But that's not the point. My taxes are gonna rise this year. Tempers too. November will be here before you know it, and if everyone isn't brain dead at that time, they should vote these bozos out of office . One and all. Grrrrrrr.

I'm so stubborn but check out this site and go to page 10

http://www.ecotec.ca/pdf/EcologicalSolution.pdf

I'd like to know why this can't work? Not one available close enough, too costly????

The City gave these industries building permits to build on the sites. I see some responsibility there.

My friend who drives the Simon Fraser bridge every day says that he has been noticing for a long time how shallow the channel is where the Nechako enters the Fraser as shown by the sight of many tree stumps and junk being left stranded most of year on the gravel where it did not happen before!

Obviously nobody paid any attention to that.

The Mayor is acting to the best of his ability, I am sure.

Not a peep from the dynamic duo - Hill and Harris!

WHy Heidi, what a good webpage you pointed out. Good web researching. I think its more costly to do nothing about the ice. Someone in authority should give those people a call!

"Entrepreneurs like him are used to making thoughtful decisions because they have to live with the consequences, good or bad"

Really? Was it a sound business decision to invest money into facilities that have a high likelihood of being flooded? Man alive, a first year business student could pick out that risk in a mock case study.

I'm all for the government investing money into infrastructure when the need is there, but let's get real folks, this entire thing has been SIGNIFICANTLY compounded by the fact that the forestry industry is in the tank. The loss of production time and flood related costs are far worse for them to deal with right now and I think people are panicking (it's probably justified on their part). Yet the BIG question remains, can anything be done to fix it? We've heard lots of options, some sound reasonable, some sound ridiculous.

The reality is that quick action WILL NOT be taken. There are too many stake-holders and too many complexities to deal with than to just run down to the river on a whim and start blowing ice up. You think the legal action Brink is talking about is bad, think about the potential fines and lawsuits that could come if the City participated in unapproved actions that caused habitat destruction to two of the Provinces largest salmon bearing rivers. You think we get a bad rap for our air . . .

People are upset with the lack of action. Fine, I get it. However, just because they are upset doesn't mean that the best thing to do is to react to them and start making decisions that aren't based on sound analysis. Has anyone considered that just maybe John Brink and the other folks who are demanding action are wrong? Are they engineers? Have they consulted with the experts? Have they received info from the various stake-holders? Are they accountable if something goes terribly wrong with their suggestions?

IMHO, this whole thing has morphed into something that, on initial glance, would appear to impact the 75,000 people living in PG. In reality, it probably impacts 1% of those people (and many of those will likely receive some sort of compensation because of it). Funny how every other issue that caters to a small group is looked at with disdain, however, throw in a struggling industry, some heavy press coverage and good ole government bashing and now all of a sudden it's a cause worth fighting for.

heidi1555 points to good info. Why can't our "ice expert" do the same?

Maybe he doesn't know about google? Too bad this company wasn't western born. This machine just seems too good to be true and probably is only because it's a zillion miles away.

Good post Heidi.
They may be a zillion miles away but it still might be woryh a call!
Probably lots of knowledge and experience to tap into!

It looks like Heidi's is the best so far .... 9km .... 36" thick ... and it looks like a river with an ice jamb on it in the pictures ....

Notice it says "preventative" ... it likely means spring ice situation just prior to breakup ... ours is a slightly different situation .....

but that is a scucum machine, compared to the other one that can only handle flat ice surfaces, this should be able to handle the cutting a channel in a quieter area

.... if it is not working anywhere, it can be here in about 60 hours of non-stop cross country driving with people spelling each other off ...... 3 days ....

But I would get one of their people to look at the situation first to make sure this is something they can do ....

wouldn't that be a coup .... heidi and opnion 250 that gave here the opportunity to air it ....

that would show you how important many pairs of eyes are .....

It seems once you know the manufacturer and put that into google, there are tons of sites .... and this machine is used the world over .....

http://www.amphibex.com
http://www.on.ec.gc.ca/pollution/ecnpd/pdf/scarborough.pdf
http://www.enviroaccess.ca/techno-14-en.html
http://www.publiquip.com/News/Amphibex-Excavator.htm
http://news.gov.mb.ca/news/index.html?archive=2007-03-01&item=1377

Monitoring the Peace for ice and thicknesses
http://www.cripe.ca/Downloads/14th_Workshop/Drouin-et-al-2007.pdf

"Really? Was it a sound business decision to invest money into facilities that have a high likelihood of being flooded? Man alive, a first year business student could pick out that risk in a mock case study."

The CN tracks are in danger too. Why did the railroad put the tracks there and why did not a first year business student point out how foolish that was?

Even the brand new court house is supposedly in the 200 year flood plane as is City Hall.

Great site, heidi1555 - I hope the City Brass reads this site although they may have given up doing so because there have been far too many constructive criticisms posted here.

"A state of emergency declared by the Waterhen First Nation council, remains in effect. However, Manitoba officials reported water levels on the Waterhen River have stabilized. Since NOVEMBER 8th the Waterhen River has risen 3.65 feet since Nov. 9 when water levels were already unseasonably high. Sixteen homes have been sandbagged in the community to date. Manitoba Water Stewardship reported additional personnel from the surrounding communities joined efforts to sandbag today. A temporary earth dike surrounds the community school. Frontier School Division has chosen to keep the school closed for one more day. Three families voluntarily left their homes and are staying with family or friends. The Amphibex icebreaker will be put back into service tomorrow in an effort to relieve some of the water pressure downstream. Levels of the Waterhen River are expected to remain high throughout the winter. Level fluctuations with possible further rises of one to two feet may occur during the next three to four weeks prior to a complete freeze-up. Waterhen First Nation, a community of approximately 170 people, is located on a narrows between Waterhen Lake and Lake Manitoba.

This was an early winter freeze and ice jam, sounds similar to here .......

http://www.turtleisland.org/discussion/viewtopic.php?p=7835

1/3 of the way down the page

In Manitoba April 2007 .....

"Doer also promised to buy a second Amphibex ice-breaking machine if his government is re-elected.

One of the machines has been used in the province for the past three springs to break up ice on rivers, preventing the ice jamming that can cause flooding.

That Amphibex was initially borrowed from Quebec, then the Manitoba government shared the cost of purchasing the machine with the City of Selkirk and surrounding municipalities.

Then, the province went in with the City of Selkirk and surrounding municipalities to buy the used machine.

A new state-of-the-art Amphibex would cost about $1.25 million.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitobavotes2007/story/2007/04/26/mbv-water-smart.html

Where have our experts been ??????? Hey, we're a winter city everyone. How many of these machines does this province have?

Pat, Shirley, John ... yooohoooo.... where are you?????

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitobavotes2007/story/2007/04/26/mbv-water-smart.html

http://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/press/top/2006/03/2006-03-09-02.html

Amphibex limitations .....

[url]http://www.winnipegsun.com/MyWinnipegSun/Forum/2007/12/31/4747360.html[/url

Simple solution to the jam. Don't know why nobody has come up with it yet,as it's so simple and so obvious. Simply have CN haul one of their infamous "standard" over-length trains,loaded with ice-melt along the river side, the inevitable derailment occurs, the environmentally friendly, biodegradable ice melt washes away the ice, all is good again in River City.

Hello! There are solutions to the problem. The problem is that the focus has been directed at the symptoms. (flooding)

We either have to remove the ice, melt the ice, blow up the ice, or find a way to divert the water. If a machine can deal with the ice and it has been used before and has a track record, for goodness sake, let's get one right away. The cost seems to be reasonable considering the amount of money we have already spent and the alternative costs proposed. What's the holdup? Who is the holdup?

Oh, by the way, doing nothing is not the solution. Everyone responsible will be losing their jobs in the near future if they do nothing. Chester

After I posted that link I sent an email to that company with the links to these articles....No harm in asking. I take my kids to the rivers all summer long. Our favorite thing to do. Funny looking back at pics. of us walking from Cottonwood all the way to Fort George collecting rocks where the river should've been and now look :) Also, the toddler I watch I haven't had to lately because his dad is out of work due to the flood. No harm in asking.

"We either have to remove the ice, melt the ice, blow up the ice, or find a way to divert the water"

Of those, I think diverting the water is the best option RIGHT NOW. I simply can't fathom how that much ice could be physically removed or melted.

Good find heidi1555. It sure doesn't hurt to consider it as an option.

That machine looks like something went horribly wrong on the drawing board.

I never would have imagined it. Good find, Heidi. Not a bad idea at all.

I don't know what the solution is, but we need to do something.

If we bought one of these machines, we could pay for it by holding a raffle to draw someone's name to run it. The city boys would be scrapping over a toy like that for sure !

I want to drive it!!!!! I'd have fun :) I would no longer be afraid to drive on ice.